A South Korean Scrubdown

Teens at Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul

There's an amazing episode of Parts Unknown from a few years back in which Anthony Bourdain goes to South Korea. The whole episode is told in reverse, beginning with a punishing hangover, and then rewinding through the delirious consumption of gallons of soju and Korean lager as the viewer pieces together what could have led to us finding Bourdain, grey-faced and miserable, having every inch of his body intimately and punishingly scrubbed raw in a blue tiled bath house. I get a sympathy headache every time I watch it. So logically, I decided I MUST visit South Korea, and while there, that I must strip naked and allow a stranger to remove my top three layers of skin with a brillo pad.

We spent nine days in the country, reveling in its color, vivacity, and silliness. Especially after spending a few weeks in Japan, where everything is beautiful and subtle but also formal and often solemn, in South Korea, it felt like you could dance on the table and no one would scold you. In three days in the city of Gyeongju, we stumbled on two different outdoor music festivals, each boasting an army of backup dancers and an entire slate of different artists. This was in the 43rd most populous city in South Korea.

It's hard to explain the pervasiveness of South Korean spa culture to westerners, who generally prefer to bathe within the confines of their own home. For Koreans, visiting a spa is a weekly or even daily excursion--families take their children; young adults go together on first dates; salarymen go to nap off their hangovers. For around $10, you can buy a 24-hour pass to a jjimjilbang (helpfully shortened to j-bang colloquially), and spend as long as you like hopping between the myriad different wet and dry saunas. I have heard whispers of backpackers skipping hotels altogether and just staying at the j-bang. They must have very clear pores.



CommonGround, a mall made from 200 blue shipping containers and selfie center for Seoul teens

Every morning in Seoul, my husband and I would declare that THIS was the day we were going to a spa-- and then chicken out, deciding instead to shop for niche Korean leather goods or eat sulbing at an outpost of the Korean Dessert Café or investigate one of the many excellent microbreweries and tap rooms popping up all over the city.

The old Magpie Brewing in Hongdae, Seoul

The last city of our trip was Busan, South Korea's second largest. It's a big city, but it's on the beach and has a cool, laid-back vibe. By the time we got there, I couldn't really remember why I had added it to our itinerary--and allotted it as many nights as Tokyo, Kyoto, and Seoul--but it was FULL of galleries and incredible temples, and our time there also involved a cable car, which means I award it a special bonus of one million points. Busan ended up being our favorite place in either country. It is also where we went to Spaland.



Gamechon Culture Village in Busan, South Korea

SPALAND! It's a real place! It's in the biggest mall in the world, Centum City! It has 22 spas and 13 different themed saunas, and one is called the wave-dream room! In another room, I felt like a piece of flatbread in a clay oven! There is a TV room and also you can buy beer with the bracelet on your wrist!

When you arrive, you pay $12 and they give you a locker key and a cotton suit that looks like scrubs if you could get scrubs with knee-length shorts. Women get maroon and men get khaki, and no one has ever looked more glamorous. You head to your respective locker room, stow everything you own, and give yourself a pre-sauna hose down. Then, you don the spa scrubs and head back out into the co-ed section of this spa-tropolis. (Me-spa-polis? I'll work on it.) There is a giant moonscape of outdoor wading foot spas with little wooden booths, where teenaged Korean couples sit side-by-side playing games on their phones and taking selfies.

Further into the enormous complex, we tried all the saunas-- the ice room, the pyramid room, the "body-sound" room, the room built entirely of pink salt bricks. All of these rooms would be excellent places to take artsy Instagram photos, except you're sweating and wearing scrubs and no bra. Finally, our confidence bolstered after a couple hours of watching everyone to make sure we weren't committing any grievous cultural errors, we separated back to our gendered baths.

Here's where I have to make an admission. I like to pretend that I am someone who is spontaneous and confident and always up to try something new; that I am someone with no problem sashaying my way through a 5,000 square foot bath complex in the altogether, surrounded by dozens of Korean women of every age. That I am so secure and open-minded that saddling up next to a stranger whose skin has shriveled and wrinkled from soaking and sitting there, staring at the wall, feels freeing and natural. But guys, at first I was really intimidated. I switched on a mantra ticker in my head that kept repeating, "You will not be the oldest nor the youngest; the biggest nor the smallest; you are not notable in anyway; you will never see anyone here again." And it was true! I do not think I have ever seen anyone from the womens' baths at Spaland again, and also I wouldn't know if I did, because I did not make eye contact with anyone for the entire hour!

The number of people who were not staring at me in the j-bang

Finally, after marinating in all sorts of pools of varying temperatures, salted and freshwater, indoors and out, I sucked it up and walked (naked!) into what was essentially a completely tiled office to inquire about a scrub. I am laughing remembering this, because it was that dream where you're in a new school and you don't know anyone and you need to ask questions, but you're not wearing any clothes, but this was real life, and also everyone only spoke Korean and I am six feet tall.

Through pointing at a menu of services, helped by a very kind woman who understood there were not many reasons I would be wandering into an office asking questions in no clothes, I ended up on one of a row of massage tables staffed by women in black bras, underwear, and shower slides. I had opted for the scrub that included the facial treatment, so she blessedly lathered my whole face with a thick mask, and my eyes were closed for the rest of the experience. And then she scrubbed me within an inch of my life. She muscled me around like she was trussing a chicken, and when it was all done, a plucked chicken is what I felt like. Like, I used to have freckles, and then I got this scrub. I didn't have to shave for weeks because every hair anywhere on my person had been sloughed away. I think I lost three pounds of skin. Finally, she rinsed away my mask, hosed me and the table down, and sent me on my way. I was grinning, half from the surreality of it all, and half because I felt like I had been powerwashed. I also felt like a champ, because despite all of my dithering and insecurities, I was now the sort of traveler who gets a full body scrub at a Korean j-bang. Hear me roar! Just let me put my maroon short-set back on first.

Bonus cable car!

 

Do the Grk: White Wine on Korcula, Croatia

this is what your life looks like all the time too, right?

Let me tell you about a place: It’s an island. The old town is all made of winding corridors of white stone. Purportedly, it was the birthplace of Marco Polo. Now Bill Gates docks his mega yacht in its marina. The signature dish is dumplings in truffle cream sauce. There is a bar atop a stone turret that you enter by climbing a ladder, and where the drinks are served via pulley system. And forty minutes out of the town center by bike, there are a few little vineyards that are the only places in the world you can get Grk, a tingy white wine made from grapes that only grow in the sandy soil of this little spit of land.

surprisingly this scene was not animated by Disney

We very nearly didn’t make it to this place, which is called Korčula (pronounced CORE-chu-la), and is one of thousands of islands along the whimsically named Dalmatian Coast. Some combination of road closures and torrential downpours nearly stranded us in Dubrovnik; we missed two ferries and eventually had to take a long and bumpy bus ride up the coast of Croatia. The bus itself eventually drove onto a ferry to make the crossing from the mainland, so that should give you some sense of how large this watercraft was. It was dwarfed by the yachts as we pulled into the marina.

What we found as we stepped off the boat was my favorite place in Croatia. Downtown felt like a mini Dubrovnik, minus the hordes of Game of Thrones fans searching for landmarks from King’s Landing. The al fresco restaurants down small stone alleyways reminded me of Greece. The late summer special around the Adriatic is black truffle, and I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t have something truffled for dinner every night for a week.

kayaking to work off all that truffle cream sauce

On our last day on the island, we rented bikes and rode the four or so miles to Lumbarda, the wine making town south of the marina. We were seeking Grk, mostly because I think the name is funny and if someone tells me this is the only place in the world I can do something, I’m sold. We turned off at the first rough hewn, hand painted “Grk” sign we saw, and wheeled our bikes past low stone walls, up a road that wound through fields of green vines, until we arrived at a terrace masked by winding tendrils and hanging leaves. A few wooden picnic tables sat empty overlooking the acres of vineyards, dotted with red-roofed buildings. A big, tired white mutt lounged in the open doorway.

team grk!

As we entered the small tasting room, a guy in his early thirties poked his head around a wall and greeted us as though he’d invited us to stop by anytime. “Want to taste some wine?”

As he pulled bottle after bottle of Grk (pronounced “Gerk,” which I find very amusing), Pošip, and the red Plavac Mali from the shelves, he chatted about his family’s history of running the vineyard. The dog, whom we learned was 18, had heard it all before, and kept napping at the entrance. Eventually, the proprietor father showed up and said something to his son, who suddenly sprinted from the premises, yelling back that he had forgotten his mother somewhere and had to go retrieve her.

les vines and les clouds

Though the day had been gorgeous, dark clouds were starting to gather on the horizon, but we were unfazed as we had five hours until our ferry to Split, and nothing else planned past the short bike ride back into town. We settled on the terrace with a decanter of Grk and our books, willfully forgetting our near disastrous experience with the Croatian summer rainstorms in Dubrovnik. And then the skies opened.

hello from the other side

We moved nearly as quickly as the ancient dog to get back inside, reassuring each other that this would pass in plenty of time to get home on our bikes. Hours passed. We slowly drank another bottle of wine. And then we had to face the music. And by face the music, I mean construct full suits out of trash bags and ride four miles back into town in the pouring rain tipsy and barefoot.

As we coasted back into Korčula town soaked and wearing bright blue garbage bag capes, a mega yacht called Paraffin was gliding into the marina. I Googled the Paraffin on our plebian ferry to Split, which we made in plenty of time (not to brag, but we even got window seats.) It’s 160 meters long and sleeps 12. It’s owned by the scion of Yankee Candle Company. You can rent it for $410,000 a week.

Vegetarian Gluttony in Friedrichshain, Berlin

the park next to our Friedrichshain apartment. overwhelming hipness.

Friedrichshain is too hip for me. Everyone is young and cool and wearing interesting clothes and riding a bike while carrying a guitar and drinking a helles from a stubby. The apartment we rented for a month lent one of its building walls to a street art park, so the landscape would change overnight. Over the course of the month we stayed there, our façade started white and ended completely covered in a mural of Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Hendrix, and Arnold Bocklin.

our welcoming committee

Berlin, and Friedrichshain in particular, is perfect for vegetarians and vegans. You can stuff yourself cheaply, which is basically my idea of heaven. So go to the corner store, buy a 1€ beer, have them open it with the bottle opener they keep at every cash register in this eminently reasonable and enjoyable city, and take a long stroll through this lively young part of town. (You can’t do this all in one day unless you eat like Michael Phelps, so choose wisely.)

cuteness matters

Go to Silo. Order the Master Wolf Cold Brew, which is served in a crystal rocks glass with one giant ice cube, like good scotch. Have the Avocado Smashed Toast with manchego and poached eggs (give the bacon to a friend and watch them suddenly become a better friend. It’s one of the magical powers that come with vegetarianism.) Read your book, absorb the hipness.

Go to Aunt Benny. Have the iced Americano, which is made with coffee ice cubes so your drink doesn’t get diluted. Have a toasted bagel with jalapeno red onion cream cheese. Sit outside, be impressed with the cool young parents who just strap their kids to their bikes and still manage to look insouciant.

vegan + doner = voner. VERY CLEVER

Go to Voner. Doners are huge in Berlin—and I mean that they are both very popular and enormous. Voner makes one so big that I would split it with my 200+ pound husband and we’d both be full. And it’s vegan, so even though you are stuffed, somehow you will still have room to feel smug. There’s even a Bikram yoga studio around the corner, so I guess you could do that first, though after a few classes I decided Bikram is the Emperor’s New Clothes of workouts, except instead of being naked I was just really sweaty and couldn’t stop thinking about how much I could have accomplished in 90 minutes in a weight room.

the end of our street, aka the view on the way to Voner

Go to Hot Dog Soup. Hot Dog Soup is a genius establishment that is the size of the interior of a Peugeot. I’ll give you two guesses what they serve. You can feed two for under 10€, including beer. They have vegan hot dogs, and several of their daily soups are also always meat-free. We can order any sort of food at any time of day in New York and have it delivered to our door, but you would not believe how often I say to Jared, “Man, I’m really in the mood for Hot Dog Soup,” and then get sad that this weird little anomaly is so far away.

Go to Lemongrass. The best Thai food I’ve had outside of Thailand is in Berlin. Good Thai food is light and zingy, and while there’s a time and place for the greasy, heavy sponge of American Thai takeout (like, around noon after a night on the town in the dead of winter, while sitting on the couch in your pajamas watching a DVRed episode of the Amazing Race), Lemongrass has the delicate, aromatic curries that remind you that Thai can be a warm-weather cuisine. Also, it goes really well with Hefeweisse, so Thai in Berlin just makes sense.

Go to Spatzel & Knodel. While Berlin is great for vegetarians, German food is full of meat. Spatzel & Knodel is your classic dark-wood paneled German haunt where you can get giant plates of spatzel (little noodle-like dumplings, usually with cheese and caramelized onion) or my personal favorite German vegetarian option, the Huge Bread Ball (technical name: Semmelknodel.) They are literally made of old bread soaked in milk, squished up into a ball, sauted in butter, and covered in gravy. If you’re looking to murder someone, dump them in a river, and have them sink straight to the bottom, no need to encase their feet in cement. Just feed them a Semmelknodel and a couple of pints of Dunkelweisse. This is winter food, so save it for one of those chilly Berlin nights.

sometimes for fun we match our beers to our hair colors

Go to Hops and Barley. It’s basically next door to Spatzel & Knodel, and it’s a raucous microbrewery that also makes an awesome cider, in case you need a break from German beer.

Go to Caramello. I am not a sweets person, but I became obsessed with this ice cream shop because of its huge variety of vegan ice creams in occasionally offbeat flavors (sesame was my favorite). I made Jared go so often that it started embarrassing him and he stopped making eye contact with the proprietor. Like, at least 20 of the 30 nights we lived there often. Sorry, Jared! (But not really because it was delicious.)

I know you feel fat after doing this, but tomorrow you can rent a bike and do a few laps of the Tiergarten. Or go on a city-wide search for matching Birkenstocks with your husband.

how do you say "drinking the kool aid" in German?

A Magical Guinness along the Wild Atlantic Way

pinch me.

The legend is true: Guinness is better in Ireland. It’s mild and sweet and low in alcohol, and all the places you can get it are just so picturesque and cozy, and let’s be honest: it feels badass to call it “The Black Stuff.” In two weeks of driving clockwise around Ireland in a tiny red car that squeaked when you turned the steering wheel to the right, we stopped at a lot of pubs and drank a lot of Guinness. But one magical pub two miles from nowhere in the far western wilds was so wonderful I nearly called movers in NYC and told them to just pack up our apartment and ship it to County Kerry.

We went to Lauragh because I wanted to stay in this gypsywagon. I found it on Airbnb and my heart skipped a beat and so we drove hours out of our way along craggy, winding roads to this thin finger of land that extends into the Atlantic. We sandwiched our trip to the wagon between visiting a cheese farm in Durrus and taking a boat out to Skellig Michael (where I couldn’t understand a word our boat captain said except when he physically got up and put me in front of the steering wheel and seemed to think none of the other 18 passengers would mind that suddenly it was me guiding them full speed ahead over choppy, rainy seas towards a rock outcropping twelve miles from shore.)

BUT FIRST! A Guinness.

the road to lauragh

We were early to Lauragh, despite driving at half speed because every turn of the road revealed another family of sheep lounging within inches of our bumper. And here’s a thing to know about Lauragh, Country Kerry: there’s not much going on. There are the Derreen Gardens, where we stopped in the parking lot and both pretended we were excited, and then at the same time admitted we actually were ambivalent about paying 7€ to see exotic plants (don’t hold it against me!) TripAdvisor lists three restaurants in Lauragh and the surrounds. Google Maps told me we were feet from a pub, but upon further investigation, we learned it had been converted into a private residence. Finally, we drove up to the gypsy wagon, three hours early, wearing our most apologetic expressions.

Our ruddy young Irish host was politely surprised to see us. He was also wearing Crocs. That’s just a detail I think is relevant.

gleeful in front of our lodging for the night

the ridiculously cute interior of our wagon

He told us there was a great pub called Helen's not too far ("Well, it's called Teddy O'Sullivan but really it's Helen's," he helpfully explained), which made me feel relieved and dubious at the same time, since we had just spent an hour driving from one end of Lauragh to the other, finding nothing but a sandwich place called Pedals and Boots and several roads that dead ended into private farms. He directed us past Derreen Gardens, where I had sworn the road ended in some sort of green thicket, and our little red car suddenly burst onto the Wild Atlantic Way, which I think is just the most deeply romantic name there ever was for a road.

self explanatory, i assume

We wound around the coast for a mile or so until we arrived at a red and white pub that said "Teddy O’Sullivan" on the wall, but "Helen Moriarty" above the door. It stood alone at a curve in the road. Across the way, along the waterfront, there were five wooden picnic tables and a dock for fishing boats. This is mussel country, so we ordered two Guinness and a bowl of tiny, sweet mussels, and we cracked into our selection of Durrus cheeses that we’d bought earlier in the day. We were giddily alone in a secret section of the planet until a fisherman and his young son came by with their mussel nets, father passing tradition along to son. I was very sure as we sat there that this perfect place was only there for this afternoon, for this happy hour, for this sunset, for this pint of Guinness. And then maybe just one more.

Mini Pub Crawl through Venice’s Cannaregio

Cannaregio by day is proof that summer in
Venice doesn't have to be packed with tourists!

Venice gets this bad rap for their food, which is confusing to me. Am I the only person who wants to turn and run, shrieking, from any place that puts a fat, greasy laminated menu bearing the flag of a different nation on each page on a little stand in front of their restaurants when instead you can make a dinner (or lunch) of fierce 1€ snacks and 1.50€ mini glasses of wine? “A MEAL MADE OF DELICIOUS SNACKS?!” you may exclaim with excitement, and I will just sit here nodding and wearing a smug smile.

*sigh*

If you google “Venice Pub Crawl,” you will come up with all sorts of lists of bacari, these tiny little places where you stand at a counter and eat cheese or fish or meat or veggies on toast. Most of them serve wine and/or spritzes, at which, let’s be real, I do not thumb my nose. But on my most recent trip, my husband and I stumbled on a couple of awesome beer bars that are within easy walking distance of each other in Cannaregio, and had a magical, delicious pub crawl for less than the cost of a bowl of bad spaghetti in the tourist hub of town.

Al Timon

But before we get to beer, an old school Venetian wine joint. Al Timon is a restaurant that apparently serves a huge steak, if you’re into that sort of thing. I am a vegetarian and there were no tables for dinner, so we shouted our order for two spritzes to the bartender and ordered a plate of assorted cicchetti. I speak zero Italian, but cicchetti is great for that, as it’s usually displayed in a glass case like you might see at a bakery. Excellent for pointing and nodding. We took our plates outside to the flat boat anchored in the canal as a sort of floating patio. It was packed with hip young Venetians and the burrata was excellent. Also, I looked up reviews on Yelp, and everyone loves Al Timon except for this character named Bob B. Bob reports, “Avoid. This is mostly a loud, local hangout. Lots of general drunkenness.” To me that sounds like the highest recommendation you can give to a bar. I may have to organize a tour of Bob B.’s other one star Yelp reviews.

Da Aldo

Literal inches down the canal from Al Timon is a place with no sign that is known as Da Aldo, which we had noticed earlier in the day because of its dusty window full of interesting international bottles. It doesn’t seem to open until after dark, but when the chain-smoking proprietor eventually threw open the door and walk-up window, we rifled through the several packed bottle fridges in the back and came up with a few interesting Italian offerings—a decent IPA called Benaco 70 and an imperfect saison with a great name: Violent Femme. We drank them sitting on a bridge over a canal, watching the painterly lights cast on the water and listening to the music from Al Timon (I told you they’re neighbors!)

Canals in deep summertime darkness

Il Santo Bevitore

A straight shot six minute walk from Al Aldo, Il Santo Bevitore was our great triumph, and is my fave bar in Venice. We stumbled upon it by day and then remembered how to find it again at night, an accomplishment I believe merits some sort of academic honor.

Borrowed this photo from the Il Santo Bevitore website!

Il Santo Bevitore has 20 taps, a bunch of bottles, excellent ciccetti, and a canal-side terrace with tables and umbrellas. As we sat there, a group of 20 somethings pulled up in their boat, tied it up, hopped out for a beer, and then jumped back over the wall and sped away into the night. The nights are so dark in Venice that this all looked like it had been painted on velvet. They were the coolest people I have ever seen and every fiber of my being was jealous of them. Bob B. would definitely hate Il Santo Bevitore.

Ps. There is apparently also a fancy restaurant called Il Santo Bevitore, and while it is also supposed to be good, it is definitively not what I am talking about here. Sorry, fancy restaurant.

Here's a map of the route!

Do you have beer recommendations for Venice? Am I missing anything? Let me know in the comments!

Favorite Neighborhoods: Venice’s Cannaregio

Our lovely canal in Cannaregio

Venice is perhaps my favorite city in the world to visit. It is deeply, hauntingly beautiful, it seems like there might be a slightly sinister secret down every tiny stone corridor, and the preferred way of spending a day is to wander from the standing bar where you drink your espresso through the impossible-to-navigate streets until you happen upon a standing bar where you drink white wine and eat cicchetti. Since we all know calories don’t count if you’re standing, I think of visiting Venice as a preferable alternative to dieting. Or something like that.

I had been to Venice in December, but in August my husband and I were in the region and I couldn’t resist another stopover. I was buzzing with excitement at the prospect of showing him around. (When I describe Venice to people, I use a lot of hyperbole, like: “No but actually there are MILLIONS of bridges! I never realized that every bridge in the world is in Venice!”) But as our trip approached, I kept hearing terrible things about Venice in the summer—that it smelled like sewage, that everything would be closed, that the tourists would be shoulder to shoulder down all those shadowy passages—and I was secretly worried. I wanted him to love it as much as I did because HELLO! then I would get to return! *Ahem* I mean, I wanted him to love it because he is my husband and what brings him joy brings me joy. Right?

This is what happens when I try to get one of those cute "swing your hair around" photos

You guys. Venice in the summer is just as magical as Venice in the winter. In fact, it is perhaps more magical because you want to spend time outside, along the canals, or in the little back gardens of restaurants. I mean, YES, Plaza San Marco was jammed. But run through San Marco; blast through the streets around the Rialto Bridge. You’re not here to shop at Prada (I assume.) Let a thousand other people Instagram the Bridge of Sighs. Go to Cannaregio.

Cannaregio was the home of the Venetian Ghetto until the end of the 18^th century, and it still has sizable Orthodox Jewish population. It’s also becoming super hip, but in a very laid back and romantic Venetian way, and as evening falls, there are beautiful people that are way cooler than me relaxing and drinking spritzes on all the bridges. This combo of Orthodoxy and trendiness is not as incongruous as it sounds—it worked for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and now it’s working for Venice.

Another major advantage to Cannaregio is that it’s easy to find. It’s about a ten minute walk from the train station, and after my experience of getting deeply, miserably, crying-to-waiters lost looking for our apartment in Castello on my last trip to town, I can’t tell you how much I appreciated Cannaregio’s proximity to everything.

Um, HELLO my little spritzy!

We dropped our bags and went in search of a spritz. I knew it was the moment of truth: were there going to be tourists around every corner? We ducked under a tiny passageway and crossed through some small squares, and Jared started laughing because there was no one around. Except one cat. We had canal-side cafes to ourselves, except for the Italians conversing animatedly on their boats as they sped past. I guess everyone else was at Prada.

Stay tuned in the coming days for a mini bar crawl through Cannaregio!

PS. Here is a video of a cat being scared by someone's giant pet iguana, which I took while eating fresh seafood pasta for lunch. I guess this is what they mean when they say Venice is crazy in the summer.

Are you Team Cat, Team Iguana, or Team Spritz?